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Scrubby foliage hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway leads down to a brightly lit welcome zone. Inside lies a surgery unit, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. And shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of extra garments. In a break area with a washing machine and hot water heater, doctors monitor a screen. It shows the flight patterns of enemy spy drones as they weave in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean hospital look at a screen showing Russian suicide and reconnaissance drones in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s secret underground hospital. This center began operations in August and is the second such installation, located in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres under the earth. It’s the most secure method of delivering care to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” stated the clinic’s surgeon, Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko.

The stabilisation point treats thirty to forty patients a each day. Cases differ widely. Certain individuals suffer from devastating leg injuries requiring amputations, or severe stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of Russian FPV aerial devices, which release explosives with lethal accuracy. “90% of our cases are from first-person view drones. We encounter minimal bullet injuries. This is an age of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean facility for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

On one afternoon recently, three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The least severely hurt, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone blast had ripped a minor wound in his leg. “Conflict is terrible. The guy beside me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he said. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see UAVs all around and casualties. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi explained his unit endured over a month in a forest area close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. Sole access to reach their position was on foot. All supplies arrived by quadcopter: food and water. A week following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (about 3 miles), requiring three hours, to a point where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant provided him with fresh non-military attire: a T-shirt and a set of light-colored denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device caused a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old a serviceman, said a UAV explosion had left him with concussion. “I was in a dugout. Suddenly it went dark. I couldn’t feel any feeling or any sound,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. A relative has been lost. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to Ukraine and enlisted to fight shortly before Vladimir Putin’s large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, a serviceman, had been hit in the upper body. He groaned as doctors placed him on a medical cot, removed a stained dressing and cleaned his recent injury from fragments. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a mobile phone to call his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a deflected projectile. My condition is stable,” he told her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a several months. After that, to return to my unit. Someone must protect our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the dorsal area by a piece of mortar.

Over the past years, enemy forces has consistently targeted medical centers, health facilities, maternity wards and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been fatally attacked in almost 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, soil and granular material laid on top up to ground level. It is designed to resist direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by aerial means.

The Ukrainian industrial group, which financed the building, intends to erect 20 units in total. The head of Ukraine’s security agency and ex- military leader, the official, declared they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our military and supporting defenders on the frontline.” The company described the initiative as the “largest-scale and demanding” it had undertaken since the enemy's invasion.

One of the centre’s operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said some wounded soldiers had to wait many hours or even days before they could be transported due to the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. I had to carry out a double amputation on one of them. His bleeding control device had been on for such an extended period there was no other option.” How did he cope with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants wheeled the soldier up the tunnel and into an emergency vehicle. The vehicle was parked under a shrub. He and the other military members were transferred to the urban center of a major city for additional medical care. The subterranean hospital staff paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, walked toward the doorway to await the next arrivals. “We are active 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko stated. “It doesn’t stop.”